In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

by S. Baring-Gould

The Viscount of Béziers was not in the city from which he took his title when it fell. He had hurried on to Carcassonne to prepare that for defence. There he exerted himself with the utmost energy, with rage and despair, to be ready against the bloodthirsty, and yet blood-drunken ruffians who were pouring along the road from smoking Béziers, to do to Carcassonne as they had done there. Pedro, king of Aragon, interfered; he appeared as mediator in the camp of the Crusaders. Carcassonne was held as a fief under him as lord paramount. He pleaded the youth of the viscount, asserted his fidelity to the Church, his abhorrence of the Albigensian heresy; it was no fault of his, he argued, that his subjects had lapsed into error, and he declared that the Viscount had authorised him to place his submission in the hands of the legate of Pope Innocent. But the Crusaders were snorting for plunder and murder. The only terms they would admit were that the young viscount might retire with twelve knights; the city must surrender at discretion. The proud and gallant youth declared that he had rather be flayed alive than desert the least of his subjects. The first assaults, though on one occasion led by the prelates chanting the 'Veni Creator' ended in failure.

[Illustration: Towers on the wall, Carcassonne.]

Carcassonne might have resisted successfully had it been properly provisioned, or had the viscount limited the number admitted within its walls. But multitudes of refugees had come there from all the country round. The wells failed. Disease broke out. The viscount was obliged to come to terms, to accept a free conduct from the officer of the legate, and he endeavoured to make terms for his subjects.

Most of the troops made their escape by subterranean passages, and the defenceless city came into the power of the Crusaders. The citizens were stripped almost naked, and their houses given up to pillage, but their lives were spared, with the exception of some fifty who were hanged and four hundred who were burned alive. The viscount had given himself up on promise of safe conduct; but no promises, no oaths were held sacred in these wars of religion, and the perfidious legate seized him, cast him into a dungeon, and there he died a few months later of a broken spirit and the pestilential prison air.

The law of conquest was now to be put in force. The lands of the heretic the Pope was ready to bestow on such as had dutifully done his behest. The legate assembled the principal crusading nobles, that they might choose among them one to act as lord over their conquests. The offer was made, successively, to the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Nevers, and the Count of S. Pol; but they all three declined, saying scornfully that they had lands enough of their own without taking those of another. They were, perhaps, fearful of the perilous example of setting up the fiefs of France to the hazard of the sword. Simon de Montfort was less scrupulous, or more ambitious, and he took immediate possession of the lands that had been acquired. The Pope wrote to him and confirmed him in the hereditary possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert with the legates, he would continue very zealous in the extirpation of the heretics.

From this time forth the war in southern France changed character, or, rather, it assumed a double character; with the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest; it was no longer merely against the Albigenses and their heresies, it was against the native princes of the south of France, for the sake of their dominions, that the crusade was prosecuted.

If it came within my scope to speak about Toulouse, I should be constrained to tell more of this sanguinary story. I am thankful that I need not prosecute the hateful tale; but so much it was not possible for me to withhold from the reader, as it is with these memories that Carcassonne and Beziers must be visited and looked at.

Carcassonne is a double city, a city on a hill and another on the plain, each ancient, but that below with the modern element leavening it, that above wholly steeped in mediævalism.

[Illustration: An entrance to Carcassonne.]

In the lower town are two fine churches, very peculiar in design, forming vast halls without pillars, and with small chancels and apses. There can be no question that they look uncomfortable without pillars, that the choir does not grow out of the church naturally, and is devoid of dignity. These two churches are S. Vincent and S. Michael. The latter is of the thirteenth century, and seems to have formed the pattern upon which the other was built in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is no west portal, but it has a fine rose window. The church is entered by a small door on the north. The other and later church, S. Vincent, has a very fine tower, which has, unfortunately, not been completed. It also has no west door, and is entered by a small portal at the side. These churches have their lateral chapels arranged like those in the cathedral at Munich between the buttresses, and the church is lighted by windows above them. Such buildings make admirable preaching-halls, but as churches are not pleasing internally.